


the language of flowers

by kagamiwa



Category: GOT7, Miss A
Genre: F/M, Florist AU, Grief, I promise, Soul-Searching, but it gets better, it gets a little dark bc I am a dark person, tattoo artist au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22065592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kagamiwa/pseuds/kagamiwa
Summary: "To me, it’s like the physical manifestation of time. You just keep living your life, saying goodbye to these flowers, and when they come back you’re not the same person who said goodbye to them.”
Relationships: Bae Suji | Suzy/Park Jinyoung (GOT7)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13
Collections: #teamprocrastinators' holiday fic exchange 2019





	the language of flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kurdoodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurdoodle/gifts).



> ILU HANNAH SWEETIE I'M SORRY ABOUT THIS YOU DESERVE SOMETHING BETTER THAN THIS TT also I'm so glad we managed to convince you to not retire just so we can get together and procrastinate once a year lol. love you forever!!!
> 
> also shout outs to shida, ellie and sapphy, and not forgetting [harry styles' cherry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGeJ73yAAhQ) for getting me through the 24 hour sprint to get this fic out lol. #teamprocrastinators for lyf (except maybe hannah).

**Summer**

The heat lies thick out on the dusty street, covering everything in a mirage-like haze. Jinyoung can see the vapor rising from the tarmac in squiggly layers, and even with the air cooler on at full blast he can still feel the sweat beading on his hairline, threatening to gather together and slide down the side of his face. Inside the shop is stifling, and the flowers seem to taunt him with their cool perfection. Jinyoung ignores them, same as always.

The bell over the door trills in the sweltering silence, and he looks up from his book. An older man walks in, a slight limp turning his otherwise ordinary appearance into something less ordinary. He smiles tentatively at Jinyoung’s greeting before turning to the rows of flowers adorning the walls and floor, each soaking in their own cool pail of water.

“They look refreshed,” says the man with a brighter smile, which Jinyoung returns with a well-trained customer service one. The truth is that he’s spent most of the summer feeling envious of the flowers, wishing he too could spend the day submerged in a cold bath.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asks instead, sliding out from behind the counter. The man doesn’t reply, instead bending over to pull up a bunch of irises, raining water over the floor. Jinyoung resists the urge to flare his nostrils. He’d just mopped up the previous customer’s mess less than half an hour ago.

“What do these mean?” the man addresses him.

Jinyoung holds his steady gaze, and recalls the thick folder his boss had dumped into his arms on the first day of work with a curt “Study that. It’s a guarantee that someone out there wants to know what the flower they’re buying means.” Jinyoung had studied it diligently, but he’d never understood just how a plant could actually have some sort of message. He supposed that people just needed to believe that everything in the world meant something, no matter how useless it was.

“Wisdom,” he intones robotically. “And compliments.” He smiles. “Is it for your wife?”

“What about that one?” the man cuts over him, pointing at the bucket of peonies. Jinyoung feels a little flare of annoyance growing in his chest, but swallows it down with a smile.

“A happy life,” he blinks. “A happy marriage, good health and prosperity.” It all sounds like words he should be saying during Lunar New Year, except he’s 6 months too early. The door opens just as he’s reciting his spiel, and he briefly glances at the girl who enters to tell her he’ll be with her in a minute.

The man seems satisfied with his answer, and takes up a bunch of the peonies instead. Jinyoung replaces the irises back in their pail. “Would you like a ribbon with this?” he asks politely. “You can also choose the colour of the paper if you like.” The man looks mystified at all this, and Jinyoung takes back his previous assessment of this man being less ordinary and marks him down as just another clueless male. He wraps up the flowers in the stock standard brown paper, but opts to tie it with a green ribbon to complement the dusty pink of the peonies.

“Thank you,” the man says distractedly, taking the bouquet. Then, glancing at the girl who just walked in and leaning in a little as if he’s suddenly embarrassed, “Women always like pink flowers, don’t they?”

Jinyoung thinks about the previous girl he dated back in university who refused to wear anything but black, sneered at girls who wore pink clothes and sniffed with contempt at the thought of gifting flowers for no reason, and allows one genuine smile through, although it feels more cynical than joyful. “I’m sure she’ll love whatever you give her, sir.”

The man looks relieved, and ambles out of the store. Jinyoung looks mournfully at his bookmarked book at the side of the counter, then takes a deep breath and approaches the girl. She’s crouched over a bucket of daisies with her back to him, long dark hair hanging over her shoulder. She turns at the sound of his footsteps, and quickly gets to her feet with an amiable but guarded smile.

Jinyoung blinks. She’s conventionally pretty in the girl-next-door kind of way, but several tattoos litter her arms in black and red, and through the mesh of the upper part of her t-shirt he can see the large ornamental peony resting just below her collarbones. Everything about her suddenly seems like a contradiction, and she’s suddenly less than ordinary. “Um, can I help you with anything?” he asks, less steady than before.

Her expression doesn’t change. “You wouldn’t happen to know what daisies mean, would you?” she asks in a light voice, almost as if she’s teasing him. He relaxes a little, slowly easing back into his service person of treating customers like they’re an old friend of his.

“Innocence and purity,” he replies like a well-oiled machine. Her smile brightens a little, and he feels a little like he can be honest with this girl in a way he has never been before. “I think,” he adds.

She picks one up from the bucket and twirls the stalk gently in her fingers. Jinyoung immediately sees that she handles the flower with a sort of reverence he can never muster for himself, as if she’s holding something so incredibly fragile that if she isn’t careful for a second it might just shatter into a million pieces.

“It could also mean a true and loyal love.” Her gaze shifts from the flower to him, and she keeps smiling. A new heat creeps up under his collar, and he’s sure that his cheeks are red. He can blame it on the sweltering summer, though. He likes the way her lips curve when she says the word ‘love’, like it tastes sweet on her tongue.

“So you know what these flowers mean,” he gestures around the tiny shop.

“More or less,” her eyes follow his hand. “But I’m really just here for those.” Jinyoung follows her gaze to the basket of dried lavender sitting on the counter. He watches her begin to place the daisy carefully back with the others, then seems to change her mind and takes it with her. “I’ll just take a few stalks of these with this daisy,” she says amiably, pointing at the lavender.

“Do you need it wrapped up?” he asks.

“Just in some paper is fine,” she says. “They’re for me.” She grins and places the daisy down on the counter, beside his hand.

“Will you be taking this too?” he asks politely.

“No,” she shakes her head. “That’s for you.” Then, in a move similar to what the man with the limp had done before, she leans confidentially towards him and he finds himself leaning in. “I’ll never tell,” she whispers into his ear.

He pulls back and looks questioningly at her. She takes the small lavender bunch and breathes it in, closing her eyes. “One last thing that a daisy can mean,” she whispers, what should be a lighthearted moment punctuated by the thoughtful look on her face. Then she straightens and walks towards the door. “Thanks! You’ll probably be seeing me a lot after this.” And then she’s gone.

Jinyoung tries to go back to his book, but for the rest of the day the bell trilling over the door has him looking up immediately, hoping each time that it would be the interesting tattooed flower girl again. “Why isn’t that with the others?” asks his boss when he drops in to check on things. Jinyoung looks at the lone daisy.

“A girl gave it to me,” he says.

“Whoa,” his boss opens his eyes wide. “Does she know what it means?”

Jinyoung smiles. “Who knows?”

Later on, his boss tells him he should probably press it into a bookmark, because “special things should be treasured, not discarded.” Jinyoung can’t see how a cut daisy from a bucket can really mean anything special, but he takes the daisy home pressed between the pages of his book anyway.

A few days later the girl shows up again, except her smile is a little less guarded this time. She doesn’t stop to look at any of the other flowers, just picks up a hydrangea stalk with a perfectly round pom-pom of blue flowers at the end of it and walks up to the counter.

“Do…” she starts, as Jinyoung wordlessly begins wrapping the stalk in tissue. He looks up, and she seems to falter slightly. “Do you… want to see what I did with the lavender?”

He pauses, then nods. “Sure.”

She slides her phone towards him, and he looks at the tattoo of the lavender intertwined with an elaborate traditional Korean knot, cascading down the inside of someone’s arm. He looks up at her. “You did this?”

She nods, looking a little anxious. “Yeah.”

He zooms in on the tattoo, inspecting it closely. It’s incredible how perfect it all looks. “It’s incredible,” he tells her. She smiles. “Are you going to use this as a reference for the next one?” he gestures at the hydrangea.

“Yeah. I work in the new tattoo studio just down the street,” she adds. “I specialize in flowers.”

“Ah,” he nods. “So that’s what you meant.”

She smiles. “I’m Suji,” she says. “Thought I should introduce myself since I’ll be coming in a lot.”

He hands her the hydrangea. “I’m Jinyoung. And I’d love to see your next tattoo, if you don’t mind showing me.”

Suji takes the flower with a smile that warms him right through despite the humid day. “I’d love to show you.”

“Wait,” Jinyoung calls out as she turns to leave. “What’s your favourite flower?”

She lifts an arm and points at the large magnolia tattooed over her forearm. “Magnolias!” she calls back sunnily. "Do you know what they mean?"

He mentally thumbs through his textbook but can't recall anything.

She laughs at the stumped expression on his face. "Maybe one day you'll be able to tell me," she says, and then she's gone.

**Autumn**

“Have you been to Nanjicheon Park before?” Suji asks one day. Outside the trees that line the street have just started turning colour, splashes of green still speckling the yellowing landscape.

“Never,” he shakes his head. She’s sitting beside the counter, sipping on a latte. The coffee she got for him sits beside his book, hidden just out of view from any customers that might walk in the door. “What’s there?”

“I thought it’d be nice to go see the autumn flowers,” she swings her legs on the stool. It’s her day off and lately she’s been spending her time in the shop, studying the flowers and sketching new tattoo designs in her sketchbook. With the air cooler packed away there’s enough space for her to stay there, and Jinyoung likes watching her pencil glide across the page, always excited to see what new design pops into her head. He hasn’t felt so alive in years.

“Autumn has flowers?” he asks, rather stupidly.

She laughs. “You’ve worked in a flower shop for the past two years and you still don’t know what seasons the flowers bloom in?” She looks at him over the rim of her cup, eyes sparkling with joy.

He looks away, his memories of the last two years settling upon his chest like dead weight. “I guess not,” he says quietly. She seems to notice the change in his mood, because she sets down her cup and moves to stand in front of him on the other side of the counter. “Sorry,” she says carefully, the guarded look returning to her face. “I didn’t mean to say you were incompetent. I didn’t mean it that way.”

He takes in a deep breath and gives her his best customer service smile. “Don’t worry,” he says evenly. “I was just thinking of something else.”

“I think it’d be nice for you to get out of this store,” she looks around. “There’s a whole other life outside of this street! And, well… I’d like to see a little more of Seoul. But only if you want to take me around,” she adds quickly.

Jinyoung often forgets that she isn’t from the city, what with her tattoos and guarded expressions, and he often has to remind himself that he might be the only friend she has ever made in this strange new city. So he nods, despite the bad feeling growing in his chest. “Okay. We’ll go.”

“Really?” she asks brightly, and he’d go with her a thousand times just to see her drop her defences like this, if only for a second.

“Yes,” he says, immediately straightening when the bell above the door trills. Suji collects her coffee cup and flits smoothly out his way with a meaning glance and smile. He watches her disappear out of sight, pushing her hair out of her face, then turns to the new customer examining the lilies. A well-oiled machine.

It still takes the better part of a month before they finally find enough time to head to the parks, and by then it’s peak autumn foliage season. Jinyoung feels a little ill at ease on the train ride there, but Suji keeps up a light chat through the whole journey that he barely even notices that it’s still there when they stroll through the gates. “Look at these!” Suji beams ecstatically as they come up to a bright field of cosmos blooms, swaying pink and white in the breeze. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

“I’ve never found flowers to be beautiful,” Jinyoung admits, watching her brush her fingers delicately along the bush. “They’re sort of just… there.”

“But don’t you think there’s a kind of poignancy in something that only lasts for a season before disappearing?” Suji turns to him, her ponytail whipping behind her head.

“Is it poignant if you know they’re going to come back though? It’s sort of like saying goodbye to a friend knowing you’re going to see them again soon. It isn’t like a goodbye forever kind of thing.”

She ponders this for a second. “Maybe. But when you do see them again, it’s like you’re learning about them all over again, isn’t it? To me, it’s like the physical manifestation of time. You just keep living your life, saying goodbye to these flowers, and when they come back you’re not the same person who said goodbye to them.”

“So I’m not the same person I was this time last year, and neither are you,” he replies, staring at the shape of her eyes. She has little bags under them that he’d never really noticed before, and they somehow make her look more lively. Like being able to see the evidence that someone is living and passing through time just makes him appreciate them more. He’d never thought of applying the same concept to flowers.

“I know I’m not,” she declares. “Because I hadn’t met you yet.”

The sun drops a little further in the sky as they cross a bridge into ginkgo and maple tree filled Pyeonghwa Park, shining through the trees and casting a glow over Suji’s cheek. With a backdrop of golden ginkgo leaves behind her, she turns and smiles at him. “I love this,” she tells him. “I love the feeling of time flowing on, never knowing what might come but always being certain that something familiar will come back. It’s why I love tattooing flowers on people. So they can keep this feeling with them forever.”

Jinyoung feels an ache growing in his chest, threatening to spread over his body and consume him whole. “Suji,” he says out of nowhere. “I can’t do this. I… I hate working in the flower shop. I hate flowers and all they stand for. I just… I can’t find any meaning in any of it.”

Her smile fades. She takes a step towards him and puts a hand on his shoulder as he buries his face in his hands. “Jinyoung?” she asks, close to his ear. “Why?”

 _Because on a beautiful spring day, two years ago, in the middle of a crowded street shaded by blooming cherry blossoms, I lost everything I’d ever really cared about_ , he wants to say, but the words are stuck in his throat. _Because I can’t look at flowers without smelling blood in the air. Because what is the point of beauty when all it does is cause pain?_ Instead, he swallows and lifts his head shakily to meet her worried eyes. “I’m sorry,” is all he can manage. “I think… I think I want to leave.”

Suji nods, one hand on his shoulder and the other holding his arm tight. “Okay,” is all she says. “Let’s go home.”

On the way out, Suji picks up a fallen ginkgo leaf and presses it into his hand. “Ginkgo trees are one of the oldest surviving species of tree in living memory. They’re amazingly resilient. What you’re holding in your hand now is the history of the world. In Hiroshima, six ginkgo trees survived the nuclear blast,” she says in a low voice. Both her hands still sandwiching his, she brings his hand up to his chest and releases him so he can look at the perfect golden leaf sitting in his palm. “If this little leaf can get through something as devastating as a nuclear bomb and still stand as tall as it does, I know you can too.”

When he gets home, Jinyoung carefully slips the leaf into his pocket diary and writes beside it, _When I’m with her, I can survive anything._ He thinks for a second, then crosses it out. _I’m afraid of feeling again._

**Winter**

“Hey,” Jinyoung says listlessly into the phone, gathering his blankets closer around him. He looks out the window at the falling snow, and shivers. He’s been wracked by a terrible cold for the past week, and hasn’t been able to go to work. The shop owner calls in every now and then, less to check in on him than to ask about the regular customers and what they usually get. “Mr. Nam? Guy with the beard? Azaleas. With a purple ribbon.”

“A girl came in just now asking for you,” his boss adds right when he’s about to hang up. “She looked pretty stressed out when she found out you still weren’t here. Said you hadn’t been picking up her calls. I swear she came in last week too. Begged me for your address when I told her you were still sick. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Uh… ok,” Jinyoung manages, struggling to get the information through his foggy brain. “Sure.”

“I’ll just let you get back to sleep,” his boss says, and hangs up. Seconds later, Jinyoung’s phone lights up with a new call. He glances at the ‘Suji’ splashed across the screen, and ignores it.

He’s awoken what feels like moments later (although a quick glance out at the darkening sky tells him he’s been asleep for a few hours) to the insistent buzzing of his doorbell. Utterly confused, he stumbles out of bed and wrenches the door open, coming face to face with Suji herself.

She looks as though she’s just run up the stairs, breathing heavily and her hair tangled wildly around her shoulders, but there’s no mistaking the look of relief on her face as she takes him in, although she avoids his eyes. “You’ve lost weight,” she remarks. She holds up a bulging plastic bag. “I brought food.”

“Suji,” he says blankly, because he hasn’t seen her since the day they went to park, easily more than a month ago. He’d assumed that she didn’t want to see him anymore, now that he had shattered the perception that they even had anything in common, and went back to hating his life and going through the motions of pretending to live.

“Are you going to invite me in?” she asks a little warily, her earlier joy at seeing him fading a little.

“I…. come in,” he steps aside and lets her in. She takes off her heavy coat and rolls up her sleeves. “I don’t want you to get my cold, though.”

“It’s okay,” she says, sitting herself on the floor without being asked. “I’ve already gotten my shots. Sit,” she commands, patting the floor beside her and placing the bag on the low table before her. She sweeps her hair up into a bun atop her head and pulls out some kimbap and rice congee. He notices the small new tattoo behind her right ear, a traditional Korean amulet adorned with cherry blossoms. “This is good for you,” she says as he takes a hesitant seat beside her. “You need to eat.”

“Suji,” he says again. “What are you doing here?”

She turns to him and looks him properly in the face for the first time since arriving. “Why didn’t you call?”

“What?”

Her usually calm expression wobbles, then she composes herself. “I… I didn’t know if you wanted me to call you so I thought I’d wait for you to call me but you never did.” She looks away. “I know you were upset at the park, so I wanted to give you some space. I know I can be a little too much sometimes, but… I’m sorry I made you do something you hated. I didn’t know.”

Jinyoung stares down at the bowl she’d pushed in front of him, at a loss. She keeps lighting fires in him that he was sure had burned out long ago. For two years he’s been living a meaningless existence, just getting by one day at a time. Now this girl keeps trying to show him what it means to actually _live,_ and it hurts more than the accident that took everything from him.

“Do you… do you still want to be friends?” she asks in a small voice.

Jinyoung looks up at that. She’s looking at him, and aren’t her eyebags just a little more pronounced than before? Less in the lively way and more in the tired way, as if she hasn’t been sleeping properly. “Of course I want to be friends,” he says in a hoarse voice. “It’s just… you keep showing me things I haven’t been able to see for a long time, and… it scares me.”

She leans over and takes his hand in hers. “You can tell me when you’re ready,” she says gently. “You can always tell a friend. I will always be here to listen.” She releases him and goes back to opening the tin foil wrapper around the kimbap, looking less tired than before. She catches him staring at her hands and smiles slightly at him. It burns in his chest, and the words he couldn’t say before come flying up to the surface like ashes.

“I wanted to be a flower arranger,” he says. She pauses, and stops rustling the tin foil. “My father owned a flower shop, and my mum was a flower arranger. I spent my childhood helping them both out, and it always amazed me how my mum could create something out of nothing, something that brought joy and meaning to the people who received it. I wanted to do it too, but I didn’t have that gift. I couldn’t visualize things the way she could. I went to school for it, but everything just seemed like a poor imitation of hers. And every time I saw a classmate produce something wonderful, I hated myself. But I still loved flowers.

“So I dropped out, and started a horticulture course instead. I met a girl who hated flowers, and to me she was one of a kind. You don’t get many people in the world who hate flowers.” He smiled wryly. “And then, two years ago, we went with my parents to view the cherry blossoms. They’d closed off the street so it was pedestrians only, but cones don’t mean much to drunk drivers, do they?” Suji suddenly looks horrified. “When I think about that day all I remember is cherry blossom petals falling all around me, and I was the only one still standing. And that was when I realized, that flowers were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. When you’re in pain, when you’ve lost everything, a pretty little flower isn’t going to do anything to help you. I wanted to forget everything I ever knew about them.”

“But… you work in a florist,” Suji says.

Jinyoung laughs wryly. “Maybe to feel close to my parents again, or something.” And then tears spurt over his cheeks and he’s sobbing, burying his hands in his face. He hears Suji get up beside him, and then she puts her arms around him. He looks down, watery-eyed, at the magnolia tattooed on the arm wrapped around his chest.

“I’m glad you told me,” she whispers into his ear. “And I’m so sorry, Jinyoung. I’m sorry.”

Jinyoung doesn’t ever want her to let him go.

**Spring**

The bell over the door trills as it opens, and Jinyoung looks up. Suji smiles at him brightly, a brilliant blue sky stretching out beyond the windows. The trees are green once again, promising new life. In the shop, the buckets are full of sunflowers and other brightly coloured blooms, and for once Jinyoung doesn’t hate any of it. Instead, he feels strangely at peace with the world.

“The cherry blossoms will be fully bloomed soon,” he tells her as she puts a bunch of cosmos on the counter. “Do you… want to go see them?”

Her eyes look worried. “Are you sure?”

He hesitates for a second, then nods. “I’m ready.”

It’s a beautiful day, crisp air and sunny as they head down to the main street. People throng around them in crowds, taking photos and laughing brightly. Petals fall around them, soft pinks and whites adorning the ground as if to replace the slushy grey snow that had fallen not too long ago. Jinyoung walks a little mechanically, Suji’s arm looped through his. They stop at a bridge overlooking the river, taking in the rows of trees adorning the streets.

“It’s… it’s pretty,” he says, blinking back tears. Suji suddenly slides her fingers through his and he looks at her. “I have something for you,” he tells her. “I made it some time ago but I wasn’t sure… I didn’t know if you would want it. If you would want me.”

She looks a little quizzical. “Jinyoung, of course I would want -,” she trails off when he pulls the amulet out of his bag. Hand painted on lacquered wood are little cherry blossoms, and tied to both ends are elaborate Korean knots in red and orange string, identical to a design she’d showed him some time back. “Jinyoung,” she breathes when he takes her hand and places it on her palm. “You made this?”

“I was never any good at flower arranging,” he says with a smile. “But I was pretty good at painting. And tying knots now, it seems.”

Suji holds the amulet up to the light, where it captures the sunshine. “This is my design?”

He nods. “I made it for you. Or, you inspired me to make it for you. Because since the day you walked into that shop for the first time I…” he swallows, and she looks at him, her eyes shining. “I felt what it was like to be alive. To want to create things out of nothing, to see beauty in what other people consider meaningless. I didn’t know how to thank you for everything you’ve done for me, so I tried to give it to you with this.”

She opens her mouth and closes it. The peony on her chest peeks out from beneath her camisole, and he opens his bag again. “Oh, and one more thing.” He carefully extracts a single white magnolia, the best in the shop, and holds it out to her. “I remember that you said you liked magnolias. I’ve been waiting for spring to give you one.”

Suji puts the amulet carefully into her bag, steps forward and puts her hand on his, still wrapped around the magnolia stalk. “Do you know what magnolias mean?" she asks, smiling the way she did the first time they met and he told her the textbook version of what daisies meant.

"A love of nature," he answers with an equally bright smile. "That's so like you."

"You know, I never asked what your favourite flower was,” she says softly, looking up at his face. He swallows, and his smile turns a little wobbly.

“Cherry blossoms,” he says, and his face crumples. Suji pulls him closer and kisses him right there on the bridge, pink and white cherry blossom petals twirling and falling around them. People pass them without a second glance, just seeing a girl with tattoos on her arms and a boy with a magnolia in his hands. Just another ordinary young couple in love.

“Are you sure about this?” Suji asks for the tenth time as he sits in the chair, his arm held out on the table before him. Beside her is a tray with tissues and a scary looking electric needle, various colours of ink in bottles stacked along the shelves.

“I’ll be fine,” he assures her, although truth be told he’s a little nervous.

“You sure you want cherry blossoms?”

He sits up and takes her hand. “Remember what you said about wanting people to feel the way you did about flowers? About wanting to be reminded that you don’t know what will happen but something familiar will always come back.”

She nods.

“Those flowers have given me reasons to love and reasons to hate. Reasons to keep living again. I want to keep that feeling with me forever.” He traces the single cherry blossom on her ring finger. “And anyway, wouldn’t it be cute to get matching tattoos?”

Suji laughs, and leans in to kiss him.

Outside, the last of the cherry blossoms whirl off the branches of the trees without any struggle whatsoever, as if they know that next year they’ll be back as proof that life keeps going.


End file.
